1. Technical Field
The invention described in the present specification relates to lower-body garments, such as skirts, trousers and shorts, with an adjustable waist portion, and in particular relates to facilitated waist-portion adjustability that does not compromise the appearance of the garments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Getting into a lower-body garment such as a pair of slacks or a skirt involves the usual human anatomical fact that a person's waist is smaller than their buttocks. Apart from lower-body garments made entirely of a stretchable fabric, as for example with hoses and tights, lower-body garments will have a waist portion that is either the same size as the girth around the buttocks where they are most protuberant, or that is narrower so as to snugly match the wearer's waist. In the former instance—as with pajama and other casual pants and shorts as well as sweat pants and shorts—the waist portion must be drawn into gathers as it is cinched, usually with a cord or elastic or even with a combination of the two, about the wearer's waist. In the latter instance, as with dress skirts, shorts and slacks, the waist is split deeply enough to allow the waist ends to be pulled apart so as to create a breach in the form of triangle whose base is at least as long as the difference in girth between the wearer's buttocks and waist. In this latter, most common configuration, the split is closed by any of a variety of fastening means to fit the garment waist portion snugly about the wearer.
It can often enough happen that a wearer's waistline changes, with expanding be more common than shrinking. With lower-body garments having a waist portion of the same size as the girth around the buttocks, unless the waist has grown larger than that girth, the clothing will still fit. With dressier lower-body garments having the fastenably split waist, however, a wearer with a changed waistline, for reasons of economy, convenience, or simply because the wearer likes a particular garment that is no longer replaceable, may still want to use a particular lower-body garment. Yet if such a wearer's waistline has expanded, he or she is faced with having costly alterations done or attempting the laborious, involved task of doing the alteration him or herself.
Of course, there are any number of lower-body garments on the market that have so-called comfort waists with give-and-take sections, usually along the hips, where elastic has been either sewn into a lengthened portion of the waistband and bunches the lengthened portion into gathers, or has been anchored into portions of the waistband in such a way as to tend to draw the portions together. In the latter case, very often the waistband is split, together with part of the garment—usually along the pockets, where the split is thus concealed—forming overlapping waistband sections retained that way by the anchored elastic between the sections.
An example of this latter contrivance is explained in considerable detail in U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,136 to Pierce. Pierce teaches an elastic closure system for a split waistband. The Pierce system is designed to elastically tension the waistband across dual lateral splits by oppositely acting elastic urging means. In the exemplary Pierce embodiment, the rear panel of trousers is urged forwardly at the splits by inside elastic bands, while the front panel of the trousers is urged rearwardly at the splits by outside elastic bands.
The outside and inside elastic bands exit respective tunnel openings that open in the same direction along the waistband, but the inside elastic bands upon exiting their tunnel openings are bent in a “U” and anchored onto a section of the waistband where the outside elastic bands are also anchored.
The elastic closure system according to Pierce, thus structured with a straight elastic band and a U-shaped elastic band, anchored to respective front and back trouser panels and to either side of a split in the trouser waistband, functions to draw the front and back panels toward each other, inasmuch as the inside and outside elastic bands act in opposite directions. The Pierce elastic closure system thus closes the dual lateral waistband splits in a manner that automatically adjusts to the wearer's waist.
Other such comfort-waist systems in lower-body garments on the market may be more or less complex, but all rely on a similar basic configuration in which elastic is anchored into portions of the waistband so as to allow the waistband to be expanded in those portions while retaining the waistband snug about the wearer. With the elastic bands in such systems being anchored by firm stitching of either ends into the waistband, however, the systems are not adjustable beyond what give-and-take the elastic provides. Moreover, although the elastic tends to wear out easily as a consequence of the anchoring it is prohibitively difficult to replace.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,930 to Phillips, meanwhile, teaches a similar system, except that the split is the fly of a pair of trousers, and the elastic is a band encircling the entire waist, but split with ends in the overlapping portions of the fly. One end of the elastic band is anchored to the overlying waistband-end of the fly, and the other end of the band is adjustably fixed to the underlying waistband-end of the fly.
In the Phillips configuration, however, the adjustable end of the elastic band passes under the overlapping fly and along the outside of the waistband, where it must be dealt with by the wearer. Moreover, although the elastic band is adjustable, the adjusting must be done unilaterally, which not only is an awkward operation, but would tend to set up uneven tension distribution in the band around the waist.